Flash 9 Performance

[rhodesbe]

I'm not sure if anyone else has been playing around with the new Flash 9 Public Alpha, but I've been messing with it a bit. I was hoping to see the performance increases I have been reading about so I built a test. I found that I wasn't getting any better results over version 8. I'm curious if anyone has done anything similar and what results they have found.

Here is my experiment.

[georgecalgary]

It's not a deal to think about performance now. After next year you have to use ActionScript 3 but no longer ActionScript 1/2.

1. Flash w/ AS3 can not be loaded by Flash w/ AS1/2.
2. Flash w/ AS1/2 can be loaded by Flash w/ AS3, but they can no longer interact each other directly.

[rhodesbe]

Sure, but some of the applications I've built can be very processor heavy and I want the whole thing to be able to push more objects on the screen. I'm working on apps for myself and don't mind being ahead of the adoption curve.

[cancerinform]

After next year you have to use ActionScript 3 but no longer ActionScript 1/2.

You will still be able to use both with the Flash 9 IDE, but of course independent from each other. mixing is not possible.

[cancerinform]

I tested your two files in a browser, not just test movie but create html files. I think that the Flash 8 movie starts later than the flash 9 movie. I could be wrong of course.

[FlashGuru]

The problem here, is rendering speed, not actionscript execution speed. Performance has been increased 10 fold or more for actionscript execution. Rendering performance a little, but not much.

[Sybersnake]

I have noticed speed improvements in flash8 content tho on the mac. It may be an illusion, but it appeared to me that the flash8 version was rendering to the screen faster. FlashGuru is right, the actionscript execution speed benefits the most from the new VM not screen rendering.

I changed main.as to use while statements.

package com.nocircleno.squares {
    
    import com.nocircleno.squares.Square;
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    
    public class Main extends MovieClip {
        
        function Main() {
            
            var numberBlocks:int = Math.round(stage.stageWidth/20);
            var currentRowPos:uint = 0;
            var row:uint=0;
            while(row<numberBlocks) {
                currentRowPos = row * 20;
                var column:uint=0;
                while(column<numberBlocks) {
                    var mySquare:MovieClip = new Square();
                    mySquare.x = column*20;
                    mySquare.y = currentRowPos;
                    this.addChild(mySquare);
                    column++;
                }
                row++;
            }
        }
    }
} 

[rhodesbe]

This seems like a bummer, but I'm sure the more I develop with it the performance increases will make themselves apparent. It sounded like the next version of the player may final use hardware acceleration so we can get some crazy screen performance. Back to the playground. Thanks.